Today I performed on of my least favorite jobs on the farm, mulching. Last week we started mulching potatoes with fresh cut mulch, which wasn’t so bad. It smells like fresh cut grass, and other than being picked by thistles, it was relatively easy to move down the row with the wheelbarrow and apply armloads onto the potatoes. Now, today we continued mulching with old moldy round bales because, as usual, our tractor is broken down. This type of application is not so pleasant. As we tear the bale apart, mold fills our lungs, loose particles stick to our skin making us itch, and the thick chunks of straw need to be thrashed around to loosen them up and spread them out. I did, however, have a reprieve of comic relief when Rufus thought he saw a dead rat body in the bale, screamed like a girl, and took off across the field. It wasn’t a dead rat, just some unidentifiable debris that looked like it was mostly gray feathers, but it wouldn’t have been the first time a critter appeared in our bales. The only saving grace is that this was the last old round bale, and from now on, we will have to make fresh mulch.

~Joy